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Monday, July 25, 2011

How many facts do you add to your Ancestry tree?

I'm sort of proud of the family tree I've been creating on Ancestry.com. As I've written about before, I'm taking baby steps to ensure that I document and source as much information as possible. In contrast to my tree on WorldConnect, which contains my entire GEDCOM database, with this tree I've just put out a "skeleton" of the family tree.

Right now, I've been focusing on my maternal line, working with my grandparents and great-grandparents to be sure that I have all facts listed with source citations, and have been adding some photos and other media. My intent is to slowly move back through each generation and add source information. I understand this is Genealogy 101 but when you find yourself going back and re-examining your work with fresh eyes you begin to see things you've missed.

Question for those who use public trees on Ancestry, how many facts do you add to your trees? Besides the birth, death, marriage and census information, do you add the "miscellaneous" facts such as draft registration, mentions in the newspaper, etc?

I've finding that there is much information I either don't have sources for in my Rootsmagic database, or the sources are derivative and I need to seek out the original sources. Too many items I thought I had scanned, I'm realizing that I hadn't, so that adds to my list of things to do. Such fun!

3 comments:

My problem with Ancestry FAmily Tree is I started it when I first developed an interest in Genealogy. I started a few trees and now would like to merege them into one. But that is impossible with Ancestry. I add the facts that I find on that site.

I have a Tree on My Heritage Tree and it is all inclusive, I like that much better. Some of the initial things I have posted were accurate at the time, but I have found some to be false. It is such a huge task going thru and sorting the Ancestry Tree.

As an experiment I put some names in a tree at Ancestry, but with birth and death dates only. After having some problems and annoying experiences with that, I now intend to remove my tree from Ancestry altogether, and just use my own Web pages plus my WorldConnect tree (whose names, unlike those at Ancestry, are indexed by Google).